1. Technical Field
The invention is related to a system and process for automatically examining electronic data to identify at least one person represented within the electronic data and for automatically retrieving and providing information relevant to each identified person.
2. Related Art
By way of background, several schemes have been implemented for automatically providing links or “access points” for initiating communications, such as, for example, automatically addressing an email message, or providing a hyperlink to one or more Internet web pages.
One current scheme for creating an access point for initiating communications with a person involves automatically converting an email address into a hyperlink for automatically addressing an email message to that person. For example, when using a conventional word processor, if a user types text in the known format of an email address, i.e., “greg@domain-xyz.com ”, the word processor automatically changes the appearance of the typed text by underlining the text and/or changing the color, i.e. “greg@domain-xyz.com”. Further, the typed text will also be automatically associated with a hidden HTML or similar script for initiating an email message addressed to that person. For example, an HTML script linked to the example text above might be as follows: “<mailto:greg@domain-xyz.com>”. User selection of the example text will automatically open an email program or client and create a new email message addressed to greg@domain-xyz.com. However, such schemes are typically limited to changing the appearance of text and adding hyperlinks to either an email address or an address for an Internet web page. Consequently, such schemes are not capable of recognizing names or other indicia of a person, such as, for example, a phone number, a social security number, a photograph or other graphical representation, or any other data that can be used for representing a person, then retrieving information or communications links related to that person and providing that information to a user.
Another current scheme for initiating an access point for contacting a person involves user selection of individual words, phrases, or names on a display screen. A context sensitive menu is then automatically provided to the user for the selected word, phrase, or name. However, the context sensitive menu is based on a predefined list of words, phrases, and names. For example, using this scheme, if a user selects “Mark McGwire,” a short biography of the baseball player Mark McGwire will automatically be called up via the Internet using a web browser. This biography may also include hyperlinks, such as, for example, an email address or other Internet web page addresses for Mark McGwire. For words, phrases, or names not in the predefined list, when the user manually selects the word, phrase, or name, this scheme either brings up a dictionary definition for the word, phrase, or name, and/or provides links to databases for providing topic specific information such as, for example a thesaurus, dictionary, or encyclopedia. However, this scheme requires that a user manually select a word, phrase, or name of interest before an associated application either provides links to related data or information, or attempts to download information relevant to the selected word, phrase, or name.
A related scheme also requires that a user select individual words, phrases, or names before links to related information are provided to the user. Further, this related scheme will automatically underline predefined keywords, and provide automatic hyperlinks to pre-selected Internet web sites related to those predefined keywords. However, this scheme is not capable of automatically recognizing names or other indicia of a person that are not in the predefined list, and then automatically retrieving information associated with the person and providing that information to a user. Further, like the previously discussed scheme, this scheme again requires that a user manually select a word or phrase of interest before an associated application either provides links to related data or information, or attempts to download information relevant to the selected word or phrase.
Therefore, what is needed is a system and method for automatically recognizing names or other indicia of a person that are not in a predefined list. Such a system and process should not require a user to manually select a word, phrase, or name of interest. Further, such a system and method should automatically retrieve information related to the recognized person. In addition, such a system and process should automatically provide the information and/or communication access points or links for the recognized person.